


fell down on my knees

by nighimpossible



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Hunters, Buried Alive, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-15
Updated: 2013-06-15
Packaged: 2017-12-15 02:19:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/844177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nighimpossible/pseuds/nighimpossible
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chris and Allison run from Beacon Hills for as long as they can: but no matter how far they flee from their dark pasts, there's no resisting the siren song of home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	fell down on my knees

They leave Beacon Hills soon after Victoria’s death.  Chris takes her out of school, and when the enrollment office gives him a pitying look it’s hard not to bite their faces off.  The cover is that Victoria committed suicide, and Chris gets a mix of “that’s rough” and “couldn’t you have done anything more to stop her?” which hits a little too close to home. 

Allison doesn’t speak for a long time, simply stares out at the open road as Chris drives.  When she finally asks, “So are we going after more werewolves?” Chris allows himself a smile at the simple sound of his daughter’s voice. 

“Are you really so naïve to think that the only supernatural thing out there are werewolves?” Chris teases.

They hunt a wendigo in the Muir Woods.  Allison gets to use a bazooka.  They save a family of four, who all thank him breathlessly and speak nary a word of English.  Chris lets Allison take over; his Spanish is rustier than he remembers.  Afterward, the two of them tour the redwoods.  Each tree is taller than the average house in Beacon Hills.  Chris takes a picture of Allison while she hikes ahead of him: she’s looking to the side, so the photo is of her in profile.  Her hair is back in a dark ponytail that swings from right to left as she walks.  On his screen, her hair partially obscures her face, leaving her in shadow.

“You coming, dad?” she calls back.  Chris lowers his phone and slips it into his pocket.

Regardless, it’s a scenic day.

The two seem to hover around Beacon Hills, however; like they’re attracted to it, almost magnetically. Every time they get close to making the turn into town, Allison starts to get agitated (fidgeting with her fingers, drumming on the side of her car with her crossbow) and Chris can feel his own chest tighten. 

“We can try again next week,” Allison offers bleakly as Chris turns back onto the highway, away from the place they used to consider home. 

“Yes, we can,” he nods.  It’s the fifth time they’ve made the trip.

*

They occasionally run into other hunters.

“The shit that went down in your town, Chris,” Artie sighs, fingers brushing up and down along the condensation of his beer.  They’re in a bar on the outskirts of civilization.  Chris had dropped Allison off at a Wallmart nearby to pick up some gear for the next leg of their journey while he and his old friend caught up.

“Yeah,” Chris concedes, but it’s not exactly his entire fault.  The way the chips fell, the way his dad… the way Gerard betrayed him.

“You know that town ain’t been quiet since you left neither,” Artie tells him.  “Got it on Rick’s word.  Summit about a pack of alphas.”

“Go back to Kansas, Artie,” Chris says, draining his glass.  “Leave the Californian situation to me and mine.”

“Cali’s a big ‘un,” Artie says knowingly.  “And you need friends.”

“Who says I need friends,” Chris asks.

“You’re driving around California with your teenage daughter,” Artie reminds.  “Ain’t nobody that’s heard from you in months.  And the Cali hunter ring is less pure than we’d like to think, Chris.  I think you know that first hand.”

Chris closes his eyes for a moment and sees his father.  “I hear you,” is all that he replies.

“I’ll go back to Kansas when I know things are good around here,” Artie says with finality.

The door to the bar opens, and Allison swings inside with a Wallmart bag hanging from her fingertips. Chris sees her initially out of the corner of his eye, and for a quick second, he thinks he sees his sister standing there, all cocksure and bloodthirsty.  Chris blinks and then sees his daughter striding toward him. In a lot of ways, she is more like Kate than Chris will ever be.

“Ready,” Allison says.

“Nice to meet you, Allison,” Artie says from his seat in the booth.  Allison coolly lets her eyes fall from Chris to giving Artie the once over.

“If we want to make the next town by dark, we should leave now,” Allison says, refusing to acknowledge Artie in the least.

Chris follows Allison back to the truck.  “You got a problem?” Chris asks her as they strap in.

“Gives me a weird vibe,” Allison says simply.  “Not really ready to trust some guy I just met.”

Chris exhales softly.  _Of course not._   “Okay.”

*

When Artie allies himself with the local Cali hunters, Allison is kind enough not to say  _I told you so_.  They barely escape with their lives from the entanglement.  One minute Chris is staking a vampire, the next Artie’s got Allison’ in the crosshairs of his revolver.

“Told ye, Chris,” Artie says quietly, cocking his gun.  “I told you ye needed friends.”

“Put the gun down,” Chris says calmly.

“It’s okay, dad,” Allison murmurs.  She puts her hands on her head.  “Don’t worry.”

All Chris can really think about is  _make Allison safe_ , and then he hears the  _thunk_  of a knife embedding itself into someone’s chest.  Artie looks more surprised than anything when Chris takes a clean shot to his head.  Artie falls to the ground as Allison brushes the dirt off her knees.  Aim runs in the family.

“Let’s get out of here,” Chris asks, shaken.  He pushes her toward the truck before the rest of the hunters can close in on them.

“I told you we couldn’t trust him,” Allison says, half to him, half to herself.  “We can’t trust anybody.  Dad.  _Dad._ ”  Allison stops in her tracks and turns to Chris, tears brimming over, falling down her cheeks.  “ _We can’t trust anybody_.”  She says the words like they’ve been a long time coming, like she’s been holding them in since Scott had revealed the monster beneath his skin, since Kate had shown her true colors, since Gerard had let her become little more than bait.  Allison’s fingers wrap themselves up in the front of Chris’s leather jacket, and he lets her cry for a long moment before hustling her into the passenger seat of the car.  Chris closes his eyes and wishes Victoria were still alive.

They’re ten miles out when Chris finally replies, “You’re right.  We can’t trust anybody.  But Allison, listen to me—I didn’t tell you the truth because I wanted to shield you from this life.  From these people.  Clearly that was a mistake.”  Chris tightens his grip on the steering wheel as he hits eighty on the speedometer. “You’re the last good thing in my life, Allison.  I can’t keep secrets from you anymore.  From now on, you should know that you can always trust me.”  He reaches out his hand and Allison grasps it tightly.  “I’m going to keep you safe.”

*

Chris is half asleep in a motel room when his cell buzzes against the cheap nightstand.  He quickly grabs the phone before it can wake Allison up from her slumber.

“Yeah,” he greets.

“I know you left this number behind as a courtesy sort of thing, and I’m really sorry to even be calling you right now, but Mr. Argent,” Stiles says breathlessly across the line, “and I know that you guys left for a reason, I do, I really do recognize that when you left, you left for good… but we really need the Argents back in town.”

Chris sits up in bed and rubs his temples.  “Stiles, what’s going on.”

*

When Chris hangs up the phone, Allison is wide-awake.

“They need our help,” Chris tells her frankly.

“What’s back there,” Allison asks him, voice barely above a whisper.

“An alpha pack,” Chris begins.   _And ghosts_.

*

Chris turns the key in the lock.  It clicks open, and the door swings out into the dark foyer of a house that hadn’t been occupied in months.  Allison darts in before him, crossbow raised, always wary.  They’d learned their lesson when they’d come back to their motel room for some well-earned sleep and found themselves face to face with an angry omega.  That’s how Allison got the long scar that goes across her lower back and dips below the line of her jeans.

Once they clear the house, they call Stiles.  “We’re here.”

“Great,” Stiles breathes, relief flooding his tone.  Chris can hear a gruff second voice talking to Stiles in the background.  “They’re going to help us,” Stiles says, voice muffled and fluctuating in volume sporadically due to what Chris assumes in a hand over the mouthpiece of the phone.  “… I  _know_  you don’t trust them… you are going to have… if you trust me, you trust them, okay.”  A sound of a scuffle, and then a different voice speaks.

“Argent,” Derek Hale says shortly.

Chris sighs.  “Derek.”

There’s a long moment of silent stand off, and then both men start speaking at once.

“I can handle the alphas on my own—”

“This isn’t just your problem, Derek, and it’s obvious that you  _can’t_ handle this on your own—”

In a swift moment, Allison has snatched the phone from Chris’s hands.  “Put Stiles on,” she says in a commanding tone.  “We have work to do.”

*

It’s a good plan.

Allison is sniping from the rooftop, out of harm’s way.  She takes out Aiden as he’s about to plant his fangs into Chris’s neck, and Chris waves a small thank you in Allison’s direction.  She’s gotten good at most automatic weapons: the crossbow was just the beginning.  Allison has her father’s talent for weaponry, her mother’s true judgment, and her aunt’s killer instinct.  Chris has never been more proud of anything.

Stiles is working some kind of magic on Kali that has temporarily paralyzed her, but the spell will only work for as long as Stiles remains undisturbed and focused.  Chris is Stiles’s bodyguard for the time being, and he does well in protecting the kid from the ravenous alpha pack.  Ethan defects almost instantaneously once the battle begins (Allison murmurs into Chris’s ear that apparently that had been worked out before the battle began, and that it had to do with one of the kids at the high school the alpha had fallen for), and that makes this a little easier.  Taking down three alphas was still a nearly impossible feat. 

Lydia dusts Aiden in wolfsbane powder before he can recover from Allison’s hit.  She has an air of inner conflict radiating from her, and Chris turns from Stiles, chanting silently against the outside of the motel, to ask her if everything is okay.

“It’s going to be alright,” she tells him, and Chris laughs because she’s not supposed to be reassuring him.

“I think that’s my line,” he laughs, and they share a grin that is soon interrupted by a low “oof” from Stiles’s direction.

A roar permeates the horrified silence as Stiles looks down at his gored stomach, courtesy of Deucalion.  “It doesn’t hurt,” Stiles says, falling to the ground.  Derek shoots Chris a look that reads,  _if he dies, so do you_.

Deucalion laughs from the shadows.  Chris turns around in place, trying to locate the alpha, but he’s too quick.  “Your humans are your weakness, Derek!” Deucalion calls out, and then he is gone, a horrible whisper on the nighttime wind.  Scott and Lydia trap Kali in a circle of mountain ash before she can attack again.

“I think, hospital,” Stiles says quietly into Derek’s shoulder.  Derek hoists him up, fingers threading into Stiles’s hair like they belong there.  Chris thinks that he’s probably missing something but says nothing besides, “We’re done here tonight.”

Scott thanks Chris with a mature handshake after Derek runs to spirit Stiles to the hospital (or, Chris thinks darkly, more likely Stiles is going to end up at Deaton’s back alley Clinic for People Caught in the Crosshairs of Werewolves), and Allison hops down from the roof just after Scott drives off with Lydia and Ethan.

“I got it, Dad,” Allison says, reaching into her bag and pulling out a handful of wolfsbane powder.

“She’s a mean one,” Isaac warns her with a grin.  Allison smirks, and Chris knows that smirk well: it’s the face of a girl who fights monsters.

Chris’s phone rings—it’s Scott.  “Stiles is gonna be fine, it really was more a surface wound,” he tells Chris in a quick tone.  Chris feels relieved.  “Gotta go tell my mom what happened; just figured you’d want to know.”

“Thanks,” Chris says sincerely.  “Glad to hear that.”

“Thanks for coming back,” Scott replies, and Chris is about to respond when Isaac shouts, “Allison, watch out!”

He twirls around just in time to see Kali’s foot claw across Allison’s throat.

*

It’s the third Argent funeral in Beacon Hills, and this time, Chris refuses to attend.

Instead, he drives to the outskirts of the town, at the very edge of the Beacon Hills preserve.  He parks the car on the side of the road, tears blurring his vision.  The box in his hands feels heavy despite holding little: his driver’s license, graveyard dirt, a black cat bone, and yarrow.

He digs at the center of the crossroads with his bare hands.  His fingers are caked with dirt by the time he covers the box completely.

“Is this code approved,” a familiar voice tuts from behind him.  Chris shuts his eyes.

“Kate,” Chris says, turning to face his sister.

She looks the same: the blond hair that ran in the Argent family (there hadn’t been a dark-haired Argent until… until Allison), the same wicked smile.  Chris tries and fails to remember a time when Kate looked less than lethal.

“You’re alone, big brother,” Kate sighs, eyes flashing black with a small blink, then shifting human once more.  ”Those werewolf friends of yours really love killing Argent ladies, don’t they?”

Chris wishes he could tell her otherwise, but anything he said would taste like a lie.  ”So,” he says, voice rough with emotion, “I can’t say I’m surprised that they sent you.  I can’t say I’m surprised you’re down there.”

“Saintly Chris Argent,” Kate laughs, stepping forward, pressing a hand against Chris’s chest.  ”Bullshit.  You think you’ll fare much better than me when your time comes?”

Chris shudders.  He lived by a code.  He tells her as much.

“Here’s a shocking idea,” Kate whispers gleefully, leaning into his ear. “Maybe the code is wrong.  Maybe,  _fuck_ the code.”

Chris pushes her back so that there’s an arm’s length between them.  ”Save room for Jesus,” Kate nods with a smirk.

“Are you gonna help me or not,” Chris hisses out through gritted teeth.

Kate rocks back and forth on her heels.  ”My boss says it’s up to my discretion, whether or not I give you a contract tonight.”  She circles Chris like a hawk.  ”There’s a lot of stuff I’ve learned down there, Chris.  New ways to torture.  I could teach you.”  She cocks her hips to the side.  ”But you’d have to give up any idea of heaven.”

Chris crosses his arms.  ”If that will bring back Allison—fine.”

Kate looks up at the dusky sky and barks out a laugh.  ”Chris, that’s just the beginning.  I’ll be kind, though.  I loved Allison, you know,” Kate says seriously.  When she says Allison’s name, it’s the most human she’s looked since Chris had laid eyes on her that evening.  ”Because she’s  _me_ , Chris.  You have to know that.”

“She’s not you,” Chris bites back.  Allison may have shades of Kate in her, but she is no Katherine Argent: codebreaker,  _murderer_.

Kate spits, marking the ground.  ”She could have been.”  Kate looks away.  ”You get a year, and when you die, well, heaven’s not an option.  You’ll come to me.  You’ll learn.  And you’ll forget the parts of yourself that were human, the parts of yourself that you like.  All that will be left is blood and pain and lust for the kill.”  Her words tumble out of her mouth, and Chris thinks that this is the closest thing he’ll get to an apology tonight.

“And Allison will be alive,” Chris finishes.

“Yes,” Kate says.

“Done,” he sighs.  Kate seems to vibrate on her feet for a long second, then she dashes forward and kisses Chris full on the mouth.  Chris is frozen for a long moment: she feels warm and real.  Revulsion is in the back of his mind when he kisses her back.

“You have to seal it with a kiss,” she tells him.  ”And I’d run, not walk, to the cemetery when she’s buried.  That girl’s gonna have a rude awakening.”

Chris breaks every speed limit on his way to the grave.

Allison is buried between Kate and Victoria.  He digs hard with a shovel at first, then with his bare hands when he hits the coffin itself.  He can hear banging coming from inside the glorified wooden box, and Chris can feel tears streaming down his face but doesn’t remember when he started crying.  When he finally gets the casket open, Allison is sobbing with bloody hands from trying to force her tomb open from the inside.  Chris gathers her into his arms and they weep together in the pit.

“What did you do,” Allison cries into Chris’s chest.  She is breathless and alive beneath his hands, against his torso, and Chris knows that a thousand years in hell was worth giving his daughter a second chance.

“What I had to,” Chris replies softly.  ”I said I’d keep you safe.”


End file.
